Greedy Goblin

Monday, August 20, 2012

EVE Character report - August

Here is my character report, I hope my plans help you make yours and that your comments help me refine mine. If not, move along, nothing to see here. I try to use a simple format that can be copy-pasted and updated. First an overview table, then detailed description of characters. Unused characters are ignored.

Char#

Personal data

Account#

Implants

July SP

August SP

Remap

Last month focus

1

Gevlon Goblin

1

4

6.82

7.39

P7-W7

Caldari Cruiser 5

2

Hek trader

1

3

1.04

1.15

C4-W10

Broker 5

3

Scout/cyno pilot

1

3

1.38

2.66

I10-M4

Navigation skills

4

Amarr trader

2

4

2.33

2.76

C5-W4-M5

Broker 5

5

Dodixie trader

2

4

2.37

2.79

C8-W6

Broker 5

6

Rens trader

2

4

2.37

3.29

C8-W6

Broker 5, Wholesale 5

7

Logi/Triage pilot

3

5

6.42

8.40

I10-M4, later P10-W4

Support, Minmatar cruiser 5

8

Rorqual pilot

4

5

2.69

4.68

I10-M4

Support, JDO 5

9

Ragnarok pilot

5

5

2.15

4.10

I10-M4

Support skills

10

Nyx pilot for sale

6

5

1.78

3.76

I10-M4

Support skills

11

Titan pilot for sale

7

5

1.29

3.38

I10-M4

Support, JDO5

12

Girlfriends' character

8

4

7.90

9.82

P10-W4

Gunnery skills

You can see the benefits of EVE Offline: those characters that are just sitting on a station in perfect remap with +5 implants are collecting about 2M SP a month. Also, by having various characters on different accounts, you can catch up with veterans. No one can learn rank 6 skills, more skillpoints mean ability to fulfill more roles, to fly more ships. That can also be achieved by different accounts.

My main, Gevlon Goblin. I'm still in P-W remap and gained little SP as the focus was on the scout. I'll learn the skills for the ships I'll use in rest of my (foreseeable) life: a Basilisk with logi 4, a Charon, a blockade runner, an Orca which I'm already flying and a stealth bomber to fly lowsec. My future is clear: Jita will be my home and Science and Trade Institution my corp till the end of days. I'll make ISK for nullsec ventures. After I finished the ships, I'll remap for more trade and industry skills.

This pilot practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory and does only trading. Future plans: finishing trade skills (Accounting 5 is missing among many other 5s). Then learning research skills to work with the agents to trigger storylines and some passive income from datacores.

She is my first nullsec pilot, her job is to scout for the rest pilots, do exploration and open cyno if needed.

She trades in Amarr and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills. Maybe industry.

She trades in Dodixie and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.

She trades in Rens and ran my planets. I switched them off, because I am cutting back my moneymaking.

She trains for logistics and triage carrier. Almost done with a Scimitar, then train for Nidhoggur. This pilot will participate in fleet actions.

While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, learning of Int/Mem. In a month remap to Cha/Will to learn Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. Finally remap P-W for my ships: the Rorqual, a freighter and a jump freighter. It is followed by industrial skills, needed to compress ore.

This pilot has long way before flying anything but a shuttle. Still months in Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills, then I learn fleet boost skills, then Perc/Will almost forever for a Titan. See below.

To experiment with Character Bazaar, I started training a Nyx pilot. We'll see how much profit this sale will provide

My second titan pilot. Originally planned as Avatar, but multiboxing titans would be some serious negligence. He'll be the holder char for my backup titan and learn titan-related skills. Will be sold when ready, replaced by another titan sitter.

On the top of my own accounts, I give a PLEX a month to my girlfriend, as it would be stupid to pay for it with real money. She is still extremely casual, though starts to show signs of getting a clue about the game. She has two ships now, got a Noctis for looting/salvaging, but everything else is done by her Rokh. That ship improved a lot. She does L2-L3 missions, having 8 dual 250s (lowest DPS but highest tracking speed large rails) and a tracking computer with tracking script increased her effectivity greatly.

There cannot be a character report without yet another titan plan. The last month shown significant changes in large fleet warfare, the Drake fleets of earlier times are mostly replaced by Rokhs, Maelstroms and other slow but high EHP - high DPS things. Here signature radius is not so important, EHP is. So my Titan pilot will probably learn Caldari Titan:

The faction power diagnostics was chosen for having +6% shields instead of 5 like the officers (at the cost of lower capacitor regen and powergrid). As you can see only 2 shield modules are overheated as this setup can be upheld for 6 mins. With all overheat the EHP goes up to 110M but only for 2 mins. The ship is self-buffed, receiving the bonuses of her own links, providing +35% shield HP for the whole fleet, the best available alpha protection.

However there is word that CCP considers removing off-grid boosting. If that happens, " Claymores and Lokis, which give skirmish bonuses, lack the ability to fit decent armor tanks" which would be pretty bad for the upcoming Tengu fleets (and the remaining drakes). If that happens, I'll fly a skirmish command ship:

Saturday morning report: 145.7B (3.5 spent on main accounts, 2.4 spent on Logi/Carrier, 2.2 on Ragnarok, 1.6 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.8 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)
Sunday morning report: 146.5B (3.5 spent on main accounts, 2.4 spent on Logi/Carrier, 2.2 on Ragnarok, 1.6 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.8 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)
Monday morning report: 147.8B (3.5 spent on main accounts, 2.4 spent on Logi/Carrier, 2.2 on Ragnarok, 1.6 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.8 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)

You mixed up some of your command ships. " Claymores and Lokis, which give skirmish bonuses, lack the ability to fit decent armor tanks" which would be pretty bad for ARMOR fleets (Abaddons and especially AHACs that depend on sig/speed bonuses). An on field command ship works if it's main tank type matches the whole fleet and logi type - Tengus and Drakes (and alphafleet) are shield tankers and they do fine with on grid Vultures/Claymores. A shield tanked command ship cannot sit on grid with an armor fleet (or vice versa), because if would be instapoped since you wouldn't be able to rep it.

The advantage of T2 command ships (BC hull) over T3 cruisers is that they can use 3 gang links and still fit a full tank, and are thus able to stay on grid with main fleet, whereas a T3 needs to completely compromise its tank by fitting coprocessors if it wants to fit 3 links.

Also, if off grid boosting is removed, that will really kill off fleet boosting titans, since they will no longer be able to sit in a safe POS and give bonuses. Or do you still think someone will put a solo boosting titan on grid in a major subcap massacre?

@Steel: you are a very frequent commenter and I'm very frequently talk about titans, so I'm surprised that the point of my whole titan "thing" missed you.

I WANT to put my titan on grid in a subcap battle. It can have two outcomes:

The enemy don't dare to drop supers so their troops will murmur and whine on the FC for being a "coward".

They drop supers and supercapital battles become frequent. While I'll lose some Ragnas in these battles, assuming 50% ISK ratio on these battles, "we" will win on the long run due to better financial background (As I will surely join an alliance that accepts and respects industry/finance instead of "lolz letz get pixels blow")

@Andru: the bonus comes from the ISK, the ability to pay for characters that learn skills while the main plays. These characters can have an optimal SP collection plans with remaps and expensive implants without risks.

Obviously a playing character can't do the same as it would be useless for months and lose the implants

Regarding putting a boosting titan on grid with subcaps - there is a third possibility: The enemy subcaps, if they win the battle, could just kill you without dropping supers. Titans are defenseless, and 100 drakes will make short work of you.

Crying rifter lollers have got titans and supers nerfed so heavily they are defenseless. There was a time when a solo nyx could drop in, fuck up 50 battleships and just log off if things looked bad.. those were the days...

As another frequent commenter I'd like to add that I'm surprised to hear you're now planning on putting your titan on-grid; from previous discussions I had the impression that you planned to park the Titan in a POS in systems where you knew in advance a battle would take place, IE strategic timer battles.

I can't help but think that deploying a lone titan on the field to any/all strategic subcap battles is going to cost you a lot of ISK, probably more than you're making at the moment (right now you can afford... 1 titan every 2 months? I could easily see you losing them faster doing that) and probably shift your alliance's ISK efficiency in those battles to well below 50% since there will be semi-frequent 100bn+ Titan losses dragging it down.

If you bring a lone Titan onto a subcap battlefield where there are presumably Hictors & Dictors around who can bubble it, it will get bubbled and your enemy will not need to escalate to supers to kill it; they're more likely to drop a Dread fleet and use that to burn you down as it involves less investment on their part. You only need to use a supercap blob to counter another supercap blob, not a lone super; they're needed to tank the level of DPS a super fleet can dish out as well as doing raw damage themselves, but that's not an issue with a single titan. You might also note that a huge amount of your tank comes from active modules; you're very vulnerable to energy neuts.

Basically, if you start dropping a lone booster titan onto the grid in subcap battles, you will lose that titan unless your own alliance's supercap wing is available and willing to commit to the fight to save it. At the same time, that pattern of behaviour (threaten the booster titan and provoke supercap response) is the kind of thing that can be exploited by enemies who want to pick a supercap fight because they expect to win it.

Aside from the probability of losing a titan booster I should also point out that having to be on grid to provide boosts would severely limit their effectiveness vs normal command ships/command T3s because they'll be so much slower and less maneuverable than the ships they're boosting. If you're just sitting on an object such as a station battling for a timer or similar then that's one thing, but if you have to, say, balance offence and defence between popping SBUs and protecting a TCU or Station then your fleet will be looking at periods when they move to a new (and presumably contested) location and will be without boosts, whereas a command ship or T3 would land at much the same time the fleet did